Traditional
HOME-CURED BACON

Green's bacon has been making the news - here's an extract from a published newspaper article:

The traditional art of dry-curing bacon has been revived by Green's of Pangbourne..and the effects have been sizzling.

Not only are people once again enjoying the taste of real bacon - so different from the mass-produced watery supermarket stuff - but the staff at specialist butcher Green's have beaten all-comers in a prestige bacon competition just nine months after producing their first trial product.

The secret of success lies in using the highest quality pork from local farms and curing it using a unique recipe of dry ingredients created by Green's proprietor Royston Hine. There is no added water - indeed the curing process removes natural water from the meat yielding up a firm and tasty back or streaky bacon which doesn't shrivel in the pan or leave that unsightly salty scum so commonly found in factory-made or imported products.


Said Royston:
"So many of our customers told us they found it hard to get any bacon which really tasted like traditional bacon that we decided to produce our own. We trialled a range of cures before developing our own secret recipe which gives an exceptional flavour. From humble beginnings in the Spring we are now producing around 800lbs of bacon every week it has proved so popular".


Royston's brother Robert, himself a master butcher, has taken personal charge of the bacon curing. It's a ten stage process:

1) Top quality pork is cut and boned

2) Cuts from the back make back bacon, cuts from the belly make streaky

3) Green's secret dry-cure is applied by hand

4) The pork is dry-cured for a week, turning daily

5) Excess liquid drained off

6) The bacon is vacuum-sealed to allow curing to complete and the product to mature

7) Mature bacon is ready

8) Slicing

9) Ready for sale